Work continues on a tank at the Cheniere Liquid Natural Gas plant under construction in Portland, Texas, Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2017.

Photo: JERRY LARA /San Antonio Express-News

Cheniere Energy is working with financial market operator CME Group to develop a futures contract for the delivery of U.S. liquefied natural gas, the latest in a series of early developments toward what some believe could be a transparent global LNG market, similar to oil and other commodity markets.

Futures contracts for LNG already exist in the United States and Asia, but CME’s announcement marks the first time such a contract would be tied to the physical delivery of American LNG.

“What we’re seeing are the initial steps toward commoditization of LNG,” said Alex Munton, an analyst with research firm Wood Mackenzie. “U.S. LNG is providing flexibility to the global market.

“The emergence of the financial products like today’s announcement is another indicator that the U.S. is well-positioned to support that trend.”

CME Group, which is based in Chicago and owns the New York Mercantile Exchange, said Tuesday that it will develop the contract with delivery to Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana, just over the Texas border. The Houston LNG exporter now delivers shipments indexed to the Henry Hub, a global benchmark for natural gas prices.

CME Group said in a statement that the physically deliverable futures contract would allow the industry to “manage price risk more effectively and efficiently.” A futures contract allows customers to hedge price risk by agreeing to purchase a commodity at a fixed price in the future.

But the emergence of a global LNG price, like the Brent benchmark for oil produced outside the United States, which is used to trade oil around the world, is still a ways off.

That will likely limit the trade of futures contracts on LNG, said Tim Boersma, a senior scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“The process of a more integrated LNG market has been well underway,” he said, “but is arguably a lengthy trajectory.”

Cheniere pioneered LNG exports from its Sabine Pass facility in early 2016. There, the company has the annual capacity to produce 18 million metric tons of LNG per year.

The company, which now ships to at least 20 foreign markets, is expanding its Sabine Pass terminal and building a second one in Corpus Christi to meet growing global demand for LNG, particularly in Asia.

There is no global benchmark for LNG. Cheniere, like other LNG exporters, contracts directly with buyers, which means the prices are not widely known, making it difficult for both buyers and sellers to determine the value of the commodity.

By making prices easier to discover, futures contracts could expand the market for LNG by allowing for buyers to hedge price risk.

“This agreement is the first step toward a new LNG futures contract that can bring greater transparency and liquidity to the liquefied natural gas marketplace,” said Anatol Feygin, chief commercial officer at Cheniere Energy.

Dominion Energy of Richmond, Va., also began exporting LNG from a terminal in Maryland in March. Other U.S. companies are expected to follow later this year, including two based in Houston, Freeport LNG, which will operate a Gulf Coast terminal at Quintana Island, and Kinder Morgan, which is completing an export terminal in Georgia.

Several other companies, including Sempra Energy and Tellurian of Houston, are working on projects expected to start up in the coming years.